How can a Mum Walk Out? Missing Mum Found After 20 Years - Went Shopping then Disappeared

[HK04]

https://amp.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article314794103.html

Feel really sorry for her now grown up kids. There may be an explanation (illness, breakdown, affair etc) but the not knowing turmoil all those years and not wanting her location to be disclosed, must be so traumatising.

How can a Mum walk out on her kids?

I didn’t say that nobody walks away because they want to. Probably take another read, pause, then reply.

I know of two sisters and their brother who in the 70’s walked out on their children. The sisters left young teens behind.
Their brother left primary school kids.

Previously their father had walked out on them. History repeated its self.

But why not tell them you’re alive? It’s all a bit ‘woe is me’. I can’t see any excuse for parents who just walk out and vanish, it’s an awful thing to do and ruins lives.

Someone who is desperate and can’t see any other alternative or someone who is selfish and doesn’t want that life anymore.

I'm not making excuses for her, don't get me wrong. I actually will go further and say that I would judge a mother more harshly than a father in most circumstances, just because a mother walking out will likely cause (even) more trauma. I'm just saying that not everyone is cut out for parenthood, and I am so so grateful to live in an era where it isn't assumed that I'd have a child.

It's awful for the adult children. Coping with abandonment leaves such terrible scars.

Look at Sarah Ferguson and Princess Diana. Both of them had mothers who left them during their childhood, and both had a lot of problems in their adult lives.

Maybe she didn't want kids but was coerced into having them. The fact that she doesn't want contact with them now makes me think that having them wasn't her choice.

But it’s obvious they’ve abandoned their family. In this case this woman’s children thought she was dead.

I’m angry at her.

Well that’s all right then cos it’s obvious they’ve abandoned their family.

Ffs. 🙄

If a man did the same, of course. Why wouldn't I? I don't understand why you asked me this. If a father walked out and let his wife and kids wonder what the hell had happened to him for decades, when all the time he was alive and well, of course he would be a monster. It's a MONSTROUS thing to do no matter who you are.

Alcoholism.
Lupus.

Both dead now.

And a million other reasons.

What a crock of absolute bullshit.

Honestly the lengths some women will go to to excuse other women’s despicable behaviour never ceases to amaze me.

NC because this is outing if my family members are on here, but my cousin walked out on her young kids. Her relationship with the kids' dad had broken down, and she was raising them alone with lots of support from her mum. She then embarked on an affair with a married man. His wife found out and took her own life. When that came to light, her brother (as in, my cousin's brother, not the cheated-upon-wife's brother) confronted my cousin for the shame she had brought on the family, called her a disgrace, and basically disowned her as part of the family. She left, her mum and sister spent years looking for her, but eventually presumed her to be dead. My aunt - the children's grandmother - raised the kids in her absence. The children have been absolutely messed up by the whole thing - as you would expect. Substance abuse, petty crime, mental health issues etc.
Anyway, a couple years ago , after over 20 years away, their mum contacted her sister out of the blue via Facebook. I'm not privy to everything that was said, but she seems to have remarried but not had any more children. I think she and her husband are now reconnected with that side of the family, but I don't think her children have ever accepted her back.

It really shook the whole family.

My mum's dad walked out.
My MIL's mum walked out.

Guess which one was seen as shocking?

and how do you feel about the countless men who do it? what about their children?

Imagine if every time a man just left his family it hit the headlines!

I know someone whose mum left and moved miles away when he was just days old. He's her only child. His father raised him. He has seen his mother sporadically throughout his life (we are mid-50's now and I have known him since he was a teenager). She treats him very unkindly. The last I heard they were not speaking after she told him she thought he was a loser.

I have never been able to relate to it or understand it and never will.

She wasn’t reported missing for two weeks after she disappeared - sounds like there is a significant backstory here DH isn’t sharing.

If your wife genuinely disappeared on a supermarket trip, you’d assume she’d been abducted or in an accident and would be calling the police/hospitals as soon as you realised she wasn’t just running late. Not doing anything for two weeks strongly suggests he knew full well she had left.

It’s awful when men walk out on their children. To me it does seem worse when a mother does it. Maybe it’s just because it’s a lot less common that makes it more shocking (a bit like how men committing murder rarely makes the front page because it happens all the time, whereas when women are murderers, it might appear in the paper because it doesn’t happen so often).

But as others have said- it’s not really the abandonment itself that’s so upsetting here. It’s allowing your children to go through decades of not knowing what happened to you. That’s just unbelievably cruel and probably impossible to recover from for those children (and yes, I’d say the same about a father who did the same thing).

This was more than abandonment. The Mum
allowed her loved ones to be in the worst kind of emotional turmoil for over 20 years, not knowing what happened to her and also likely wasted huge amount of public funds. That is and was cruel in the extreme. Whatever the reason.

Feckless fathers and mediocre men don’t excuse this and are awful too. Their kids absolutely don’t deserve that either.

Just thinking of her kids for this post.

Just imagine your Mum goes out shopping and never returns. No note. No contact. Just gone. Then she is found two decades later and won’t give you an explanation or let you know where she is.

I’m sorry, just cos men can be callous too, this is about this case and that doesn’t excuse putting young people through that imho. Letting people think she was murdered rather than just saying can’t cope any more, I’m off, is indefensible.

If one of our family members didn’t come home today. Imagine the 20 years of extreme hurt and harm that would cause. It’s not something to dismiss or be flippant about.

Mine left because she is a cunt.

If people could stop trying to find excuses for that just because she has a vagina it would be great. She wasn’t any of the suggestions pp have made. She was, and still is, a nasty piece of shit.

She is living her life without any fucks to give.

I’m living mine with complex PTSD.

Maybe the person the OP is talking about was unfulfilled.
My auntie is incredibly bright. Did well in school and then secured a really interesting job. But she was married in the early 1960s when women were expected to give up their jobs as soon as they got married/ became pregnant. That’s what happened to her - she became a stay at home mother/housewife. I can only think that going from being someone who loved learning and working, to then solely being a housewife must have been hard.

Sorry to hear about your Aunt @RichPetuniaAgain . Good points.

Guess it’s less about why but how it happened. At least let someone know you’re ok - even someone in authority and if applicable add but don’t want to be found. I can’t imagine how in good conscience you could sleep knowing the harm and suffering your kids are going through thinking you are dead. For two decades.

My mother did then a year later my father went too. Giving birth doesn’t make you a good parent.

It does not get more selfish than leaving your children wondering what's happened to you for the rest of their lives.
No closure.

Evil.

I think it’s because of biology. A woman grows, carries and births her child. Walking out on that child will always have a greater impact than a father walking out.